Consider all the atoms in 10 million galaxies … At midnight on June 18th, 1997, the DESCHALL Project bore fruit. The challenge had been to use ‘Brute Force’ to discover the meaning of a message which had been encrypted. Going through up to seven billion possibilities per second, the key was cracked after 96 days by thousands of computers…
The (US) FBI has issued a warning that scammers are altering benign photographs and videos to create explicit deepfake photos videos. The deepfake videos and photos are publicly circulated on social media or pornographic websites and/or sent to victims for the purposes of targeting them with harassment or sextortion schemes. The advice is to exercise caution when posting or…
Using WhatsApp as a personal note-taking tool allows you to conveniently store and organise your thoughts, links, and important information and provides a fast and accessible way to capture and retrieve notes whenever you need them. Here’s how to use WhatsApp as a personal note-taking tool: – Open WhatsApp on your mobile device and create a new chat by…
An Observer investigation has reported uncovering evidence that 20 NHS Trusts have been collecting data about patients’ medical conditions and sharing it with Facebook. Using A Covert Tracking Tool The newspaper’s investigation found that over several years, the trusts have been using the Meta Pixel analytics tool to collect patient browsing data on their websites. The kind of data…
Hmm, where have we seen this before? Stanford University scientists have created a multi-layered, self-healing electronic skin for robots and prosthetics that has a sense of touch and can realign itself autonomously when cut. Layered Polymers The research team created the synthetic skin using thin layers of rubber, latex (natural polymers), and other polymers including PPG (polypropylene glycol) and…
With the Metropolitan Police Services’ (MPS) director of intelligence recently defending and pushing for a wider rollout of facial recognition technology, we look the current situation, the likely way forward, and its implications. What Is Facial Recognition Technology? The kind of facial recognition technology called Live Facial Recognition (LFR) that police have used at special assignments and high-profile events…
With the UK, US, and Australian military trialling the use of ‘AI drone swarms’ that can overwhelm enemy defences, we look at whether drone wars could soon become a reality. UK Drone Swarm Trial The first UK military trial of an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled drone swarm in collaboration with the US and Australia is reported by UK Defence Science…
Japan’s Kyoto University working with Nasa and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) plan to launch wood rather than metal-based satellites into orbit from next year. LignoSat As part of the LignoSat Space Wood Project, which began in April 2020, as a collaboration between Kyoto University and Sumitomo Forestry, wood specimens have been tested with exposure in space at…
Would E.T. Be Better Off With Zoom? In the iconic movie E.T (1982), a memorable scene shows the alien rigging up a child’s toy (Speak & Spell) with an umbrella, a record player and other paraphernalia to make a makeshift intergalactic communicator, while uttering the unforgettable line “E.T. phone home.” This moment demonstrates Spielberg’s genius, yet for the nerds…
A senior researcher at the Citizen Lab has revealed that scammers have been uploading PDFs containing links to multiple government and university websites. Some of the PDFs have been found to contain links to websites offering hacking services for Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat accounts. It’s also thought possible that some of the uploaded PDFs could have malicious content. It’s…
